Encounters (36 page)

‘Here you are, sir. Three balls for fifty pence. Small price to pay to get rid of your inhibitions, sir. Pretend it’s your old woman, sir. Really put some beef into it.’

Ginny flinched. Surely he wasn’t going to? She watched as Malcolm fished in his pocket for the money. Then he took the balls from the man. The first thwacked into the dresser back with such force that three saucers fell. The other two followed rapidly, shattering bowls. Malcolm was grinning. ‘Thanks, chum. I needed that.’ Then he was wandering off. He never looked round once.

Malcolm.

She stood and watched as he disappeared into the crowd and suddenly she found she was fighting back tears, screwing up her handkerchief in her fist. She felt desolate and abandoned as she was jostled out of the way by a big bouncing woman who had spied the stall.

‘Come on, George. You’ve always wanted to smash the china. Come and have a go at this then.’ The husband, equally big and bouncing, pushed after her and squealing with laughter the pair of them threw their balls at the dresser, hurling cheery insults after each shot.

Miserably Ginny gazed at the ground as the cascading china fell on the dim red design of the grubby carpet. It was a bit like the carpet in her parents’ dining room. The kind she had thought would look so pretty in their flat, under the white melamine table …

She sniffed and blew her nose. Then, cautiously, she edged a bit closer trying to see the carpet better. Actually it was little more than a rug. But five pounds? It seemed too good to be true.

‘Want another go, love? Come on, get it all out of your system. Four balls for you, wasn’t it? Four for fifty.’ He had spotted her at once.

She smiled at him uncertainly. ‘Actually I was looking at the carpet.’

‘Ah, I could tell you was a lady of discernment.’ He slipped the balls into a capacious pocket. ‘Real Persian that is. Woven in the desert and brought across the sands on the back of a camel I shouldn’t wonder. Here, have a real butchers.’ He held up the rope which held back the throwers so she could duck underneath and come closer. She walked with him to the dresser, feeling suddenly very exposed, blushing at the interested faces lined up behind her. Now that she was close she could see the carpet was horribly threadbare and torn. It was stained too beneath the piles of china. He stopped and with a flick of the wrist pulled it clear, pouring the crocks into a heap on the dusty grass. ‘Look at that. There’s real quality there. It’s an antique you know. That’s why it’s a bit worn. It’s an antique.’ He glanced at her sharply from beneath his sandy brows and she found herself smiling suddenly.

‘I can see it’s old,’ she murmured, seriously.

Her finger traced the pattern of little square stylized birds round the borders. She wanted it badly, however worn. She hesitated. Malcolm would kill her of course.

‘Come on, darling. Make up your mind. There’s people waiting to throw.’

‘I’ll have it.’ She gulped a little nervously, wondering suddenly if she had five pounds in her bag.

Solemnly he began to roll it up, carrying it effortlessly under his arm. He threw it down on the grass just beyond the rope as she scrabbled in her purse. Four pound coins and a pile of odd loose change. He counted it carefully and then he grinned. ‘Want another throw for luck? On the house?’ But she shook her head.

The rug was surprisingly heavy. She heaved it up into her arms and then stood still. Malcolm had the car keys. She wasn’t even sure where he’d parked the wretched car. She couldn’t wander round the fête carrying a carpet. What on earth was she to do? The trouble was she couldn’t stop smiling. She was so ridiculously pleased with the thing.

She carried it away from the crowds to an emptier corner of the field where two oak trees stood, isolated from the woods behind the hedge. Nearby three girls were giving pony rides, leading the patient animals whose heads drooped lower and lower in the heat with a succession of breathlessly excited small children clutching their manes.

She set down the rug and carefully unrolled it on the grass, brushing off the bits of splintered china and goosegrass which still clung to it. It had a skimpy fringe on one side – at the opposite end the fringe seemed to have been shaved off. She stood and gazed at it proudly for a few minutes and then, experimentally, she knelt on it, brushing the threadbare pile with her hand. It was the first Persian rug she had ever owned.

‘Don’t tell me. It can fly!’ Suddenly Malcolm was standing behind her, a coconut nestled in the crook of his arm. He was laughing at her.

She stroked it again. Protectively. ‘For all I know it can. This is the sort of place one finds magic carpets.’

‘What, at an Aunt Sally shy?’ He snorted with laughter. Then he came and knelt beside her, reverently putting the coconut on the rug in front of him. ‘Come on then. Ready to wish? Where do we want to go?’

He glanced at her sideways. ‘I saw the rug too. I had a little bet with myself that you’d spot it. You know he’s got another one down there already. Even more tatty, if that’s possible.’ He put his arm round her suddenly. ‘Oh my lovely Ginny. You’ll never learn will you, sweetheart?’ He grinned again. ‘Right. I’m waiting. Where are we flying to?’

‘Just home? I want to see the rug down, in the flat.’ She couldn’t keep the slight note of bravado out of her voice.

He was sitting cross legged now, palms down beside him on the rug, feeling the pile. ‘I suppose we could mend it. If it were backed in some way it might not look too bad. Funnily enough these rugs can be dreadfully shabby and yet still look nice …’

She looked at him, her green eyes wide with astonishment. ‘But Malcolm, it’s old!’

He grimaced at her. ‘I don’t dislike old things on principle, love. I jut want to keep our flat in one style. As it happens I think a Persian rug or two would fit. It would look lovely under my table.’ He glanced at her sideways. ‘Perhaps you’re right about that room. Perhaps it does need a little more colour to give it warmth. This would provide it, wouldn’t it?’

‘Oh, Malcolm!’ She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him; ‘Oh Malcolm, I do love you sometimes.’ A thought struck her suddenly. ‘I saw you at the stall, breaking china. Did you really think of me when you were doing it?’

‘Of course. Every shot.’ His eyes were twinkling mischievously. ‘I’ll bet you had a go too. And thought of me. Didn’t you?’

She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. ‘Well, there was this hideous green vase. And the man did say “pretend it’s your old man”.’

‘Did you hit it?’ he asked casually, lying back and putting his arm across his eyes.

She giggled. ‘A bull’s-eye.’

‘But you’re usually such a bad shot!’ He sounded quite indignant.

‘Ah, but I was provoked beyond endurance.’

‘Just because I wanted an ice-cream?’

‘That’s right.’ She lay back beside him and stretched her arms ecstatically above her head. ‘I am always provoked by ice-creams, especially pink ones.’

‘And by white melamine tables?’

‘Those too.’

He nodded sleepily. ‘As long as I know,’ he said. ‘By the way. Did you see I’d won a coconut?’

‘H
ave you time for a wee crack, Aggie?’ Betty Anderson popped her head over the privet hedge and watched critically as her neighbour pushed two more tulip bulbs into the soft black soil.

Aggie Cameron straightened her back and wiped an earthy hand on her apron. ‘What is it now, Betty? Have you yet more gossip for me, hen?’ She didn’t mean to sound impatient but she had been enjoying the peace of the crisp cold afternoon.

She knew, however, that Betty meant well and there was always the chance that the story would be about someone Aggie had actually met. Gossip lost its enjoyable edge if you did not know the people concerned. ‘Come away in now and I’ll put on the kettle while you tell me,’ she said more softly.

She listened as Betty, her shoes rustling through the drifting leaves, made her way down her own side of the hedge out of the little gate and in through the identical one next to it. Then she turned and led her guest into the house.

Betty had at last learned not to offer to help. Aggie was not concerned that Betty would have made the tea in any one of a dozen kitchens. In hers, where everything had to be kept just so, no one touched anything. She did not like to be helped.

‘Can I ask you something, Aggie?’ She heard Betty’s voice, slightly diffident, from the fire-side chair. ‘How is it that you take so much care of the garden when you can’t …’ She hesitated, suddenly embarrassed.

‘Can’t see the flowers I’m planting?’ Aggie finished for her. ‘Och that’s easy, Betty. I can smell, can’t I? I can touch their soft petals and I can feel the green leaves trembling with the sap. I know you’ll think I’m foolish, but I can almost hear the flowers sing as they hang their heads and rustle in the wind. And I can remember their colours you know.’ She smiled gently, as she set the kettle down on the gas. ‘I haven’t always been blind. I can remember fine what a garden should look like in the spring.’

She groped for the other chair and sat down, waiting for the expected piece of gossip. For a moment there was silence and she sensed that her companion was inexplicably uncomfortable.

‘What is it, hen? What’s the matter? What is it you want to say to me?’

‘Aggie. I’ve been keeping company with Roddy Mackay. I think you know that?’

‘Aye. He’s a fine man.’ Aggie nodded sagely. She waited, her hands quietly folded in her lap.

‘I think he’s asked me to marry him, Aggie,’ Betty went on in a rush. ‘What am I to do?’

Aggie sat for a moment, her blue eyes fixed unseeing on the kitchen fire. Then she smiled. ‘He’s a fine man, Betty, as I said. But if you only think he’s asked you and you’re not sure what to do, then I think you’d best do nothing.’

Betty blushed a little and leaned forward. ‘I think I love him, Aggie. I go weak-kneed and foolish as a schoolgirl when he comes to the house. It’s ten years since my man died. I’ve not felt like this since I was courting him.’

Aggie rose stiffly and went to the kettle, her hand going without hesitation to the handle.

‘Have you made up your mind what to say to him then?’

There was silence. Then Betty said. ‘The trouble is Aggie, I’m not minded to leave my house. I’ve lived here too long. I’ve no desire to go up the mountain to Craigbeg.’

Aggie nodded. The two of them lived in pleasant little cottages and the gardens were beautiful. It took someone young and agile to live in the hills. Someone like her niece Alison and her husband. She remembered how they had gone for a drive up the glen and come back thrilled with the beauties of Craigbeg. They had even wanted, dreamily, to buy the place for themselves. How wonderful it would have been if they could live near her, close at hand. But Mackay had rudely refused their tentative offer for his cottage. And why not? He lived there himself. Now, if only … But Aggie firmly put the thought behind her.

‘You’d best think about it, Betty. Don’t say anything to the man, till you’ve made up your mind properly.’

It was four days later that Aggie, weeding by feel among the last blooms on the rose bushes by the garden gate, heard the deep cheery voice of Roddy Mackay above her.

‘You’re doing a fine job there, Mistress Cameron. I haven’t seen such a garden in ages.’ She heard her gate click and his step on the gravel path.

‘May I have a word with you,’ she heard him go on, his voice suddenly confidential close to her ear.

‘Of course you may.’ Aggie turned to him, wiping her earthy fingers on her apron. ‘There’s nothing wrong I hope, Mr Mackay?’

‘Nothing indeed, Mistres Cameron, it’s just that I have a wee bit of a problem and I’m no very sure how to solve it.’

There was a moment of silence. In the warm autumn sunshine, Aggie could hear the wistful song of her robin. He was waiting for the stranger to leave so that he could hop back to the newly turned earth at her feet.

‘The thing is, I think I’ve offended Betty Anderson. I’ve been going to see her fairly often, two or three times a week and then last time I went over there I must have said something to upset her. She’s not said a word to me since. When I called yesterday and the day before, she didn’t open the door to me, though I’ve an idea she was in.’ Aggie could hear an aggrieved note slipping into the voice.

‘That’s strange,’ she replied very cautiously. ‘I know for a fact she has a great regard for you, Mr Mackay. Can you not think what it is you might have said?’

He kicked the gravel on her path and she heard him scratch his head noisily. ‘I cannot and that’s a fact. I mentioned to her that maybe her garden could do with a bit of a dig. That could have been it, I suppose. She said she wasn’t strong enough to do it herself now she hadn’t a man to help her. Well, I said, perhaps we could come to an arrangement. It doesn’t do not to have a man to take care of your garden.’ He paused.

Aggie smiled. ‘There’s no man to take care of mine either.’

‘Och woman, but you do fine. You’ve no need of anyone. Betty now, she’s not got the fingers for gardening. Such a fine patch it is, but her flowers are thin and poor and they’re in all the wrong places and she hasn’t a vegetable in the place.’

Aggie had always suspected as much. ‘I know how you must miss gardening, Mr Mackay, living on that rocky hill yourself. I wonder, did you suggest some kind of permanent arrangement to look after her garden for her?’

‘Well, I did and I didn’t.’ He shuffled his feet again. ‘To tell you the truth I told her that I’d be happy to take care of the matter for her, if she’d allow me. Then she went all foolish and giggly and said she’d have to think about it. Silly woman. I know she’s enough money and I’d not charge her over much.’

Poor Betty. So it was as a gardener he had offered his services, nothing more. In spite of herself Aggie could not hold back a sad little smile.

‘Did you mention money, Roddy Mackay?’ she enquired innocently.

‘I did not. I thought it should come from her.’

‘Do you not think that maybe that’s what embarrassed her?’

Again he scratched his head. ‘Has she no money then?’

Aggie saw her chance. ‘Aye, she’s got money. She’s got a fair bit tucked away and of course there’s the house that’s worth a lot too, with that good land. But can you no see man, it’s an insult for a bonnie woman like Betty Anderson to have to pay a man to work in her garden. There are many as would do it for nothing.’ She paused, waiting for a reaction.

‘Are there so?’ He was pondering.

‘There are indeed. I know for a fact she would rather you were the one to help her and she knows how you love the garden but there she is, widowed, healthy, lonely.’ Aggie emphasized each word carefully. ‘It’s my opinion she needs a man to look after her, Roddy Mackay. The garden is only one of the things that need taking care of.’

She broke off a stray tendril of weed and twiddled it between her fingers.

‘She’s wealthy, you say?’

‘Aye, she is that.’

‘And there are men, shall we say, courting her?

‘There are a few more than a wee bit interested.’ Aggie smiled to herself.

‘Is that so?’ Roddy Mackay’s voice was thoughtful again. ‘Well, I’m glad I had this wee chat with you, Mistress Cameron. Will you mind and not say a word to Betty about this please?’ The gate clicked open. ‘I’ll come and have another word with her this evening.’

Aggie stood and listened to his footsteps as he walked purposefully down the lane. Then she bent once more to her roses.

The next morning Betty Anderson knocked on her door as Aggie was washing up her egg cup and plate.

‘You know what I told you the other day, hen, about Roddy Mackay asking me to marry him? She was breathless with excitement.

Aggie nodded quietly and began to dry a knife.

‘Well, I wasn’t sure what to do and so after I talked to you I thought I’d follow your advice and do nothing, to give myself the chance to decide, you understand and I avoided him, and I even hid behind the curtain when he knocked on the door.’ She giggled excitedly. ‘Well, last night he came over again. Straight in he came, without knocking even, with a great box of chocolates. He fair swept me off my feet. He said he thought I’d probably misunderstood his intentions, and that I should know he meant to make an honourable proposal. Oh, Aggie, he declared himself really well.’ She stopped and waited expectantly.

‘And what did you say, Betty?’

‘Oh, I said yes. Och, Aggie, he’s a really fine man!’

Aggie nodded thoughtfully and put away the last of her china. ‘So will you be going to live up at Craigbeg now?’

‘No, he says he’d like us to go on living here. He likes the garden, you know. It’s always been his great weakness, gardening and there’s no land worth the name at Craigbeg, he says.’

Aggie took down her tea caddy. ‘Will you take a cup now you’re here, Betty, to celebrate? When will the great day be?’

‘Oh, soon, soon.’ Betty was ecstatic. ‘He said he’d bring down his gardening things in the van this week. He’s no real use for them up there and he can make a start on the beds, he said.’ She giggled coyly.

That evening Aggie sat down at her telephone and carefully dialled her niece’s number.

‘Is that you, Alison? Now listen. The cottage you liked so much at Craigbeg, I happen to know that it’s coming on the market fairly soon. You’d be wise to make an offer at once.’

‘But he said he’d never shift.’ Alison’s voice on the phone was indignantly puzzled.

‘Well, something’s happened to change his mind,’ said her aunt quietly. ‘He decided he couldn’t live without a garden.’ Smiling to herself contentedly, she hung up.